


Offering

by AVegetarianCannibal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e07 Digestivo, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:27:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal
Summary: Will finally knows what he has to do.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 125





	Offering

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this to my Tumblr ages ago and didn't realize I'd never posted it here.

Will is conscious.

He’s paralyzed from whatever brew Cordell injected into him, but he can hear the violence and see it out of the corner of his eye. He knows it’s Hannibal before he even sees him. He has mixed feelings, to say the least. Hannibal is no knight in shining armor, whether or not he’s there on a rescue mission. Will is fairly certain that Hannibal’s only stopping Cordell’s scalpel so he can finish the job himself. Their Italian dinner will continue as if everything between then and now has only been an interlude. Will sighs. He’s barely even afraid anymore.

After things fall silent, Hannibal appears over him. He’s disheveled but smiling as he undoes all the restraints. “Can you move?” he asks.

Will tries to answer, but can’t. All he can do is stare.

“I suppose not,” Hannibal says. “Well, you try to rest up a little, if you can. I have a few matters to attend to with Mason.”

He closes his eyes, fully expecting to stare down another bone saw the next time he opens them.

***

He’s only vaguely aware of Hannibal pulling clothes onto his body as he lies on the operating table. He can hear Margot and Alana talking somewhere in the room, but not well enough to make out what they’re saying. He can smell blood in the room, and… other things, much more faintly.

He wants to tell Hannibal not to bother dressing him. _Just get it over with and eat me, for crying out loud._ He can face death, but another round of drama might be too much to bear.

Hannibal smooths his hair and asks someone in the room, “Do you have a hat for him I could borrow?”

Will tries to frown, confused, but his face still won’t move.

***

The hat falls off somewhere early in their escape and Hannibal doesn’t stop to pick it up. Will thinks there must be more efficient, less labor-intensive ways of transporting his immobile form, but Hannibal seems intent on carrying him as if he expects to come across a threshold sometime soon. Will drifts in and out of consciousness. Occasionally he hears Hannibal humming in time with his footfalls in the snow.

***

He knows they’re in his little home in Wolf Trap by the smell of it. A house lived in by seven dogs has a certain smell, and not a bad one, by his nose. It’s like a faint impression of the scent of their paws, collected by the furniture and their bedding, and held onto like memories. He supposes it’ll be the last thing he smells. He wonders if Hannibal will turn him into sausage for his own dogs, or will he greedily eat everything himself? Probably the latter.

Hannibal arranges him on the bed and begins pulling off his clothes, now cold and wet, and disappears into one of the other rooms. Will hears him opening and closing drawers before he returns with flannel pajamas.

Will feels like a ragdoll being dressed, but Hannibal’s hands are so tender with him that Will would probably lean into their touch if he could move yet. He’s beyond being embarrassed by the time Hannibal takes him in hand and helps him urinate into a small basin. The whole process feels partly clinical, but mostly like being cared for.

The last thing he’s aware of just before he falls asleep is Hannibal wiping his various wounds with a wet, soapy cloth. “You’ll need a plastic surgeon if you don’t want a scar,” Hannibal says as he dabs at the place where his head was nearly hinged open. “I’d do it myself, but you might not want me to, after…everything.”

***

Will isn’t certain if he’s dreaming or awake when he hears Hannibal talking to him, his voice both quiet and rough. “They told me you were dead, Mason’s men. For the first several hours of our trip back from Italy, I thought you were dead. It’s not enough, just having memories of you, it turns out.”

He reminds himself he doesn’t know if he’s only dreaming it.

***

He can move again by the time the sun is up and spilling watery, silver light across his eyes. He sits up as Hannibal is just coming back inside, having spoken to Chiyoh on the front porch. He doesn’t know what Hannibal wants from this point on, but it doesn’t have anything to do with eating his brain. He could have left at any time. He needn’t have rescued Will at all, and certainly not carried him through the snow for however many miles. He could have slipped away into the night while Will slept. What if none of it had been a dream?

_What if all he wants now is me?_

They talk about tea cups and memories and victories that aren’t victories. Will talks about his dogs. Through it all, Hannibal looks so rumpled and so _soft_ sitting in his bedside chair. After everything, he is a man.

_What if he believes he can’t have what he wants?_

“I’m not going to miss you,” Will finally says, measured. There are means of influence besides violence. “Goodbye, Hannibal.”

There’s a flicker of a moment when Will wants to take it back. He hates the words even as they hang in the air between them, but he leaves them be. After a while, they sink in and Hannibal gets up and walks out the door, without an atom of anger, but entire constellations of regret.

He knows the regret is real because he understands Hannibal better now.

He also understands that Jack will come sooner or later, and that Hannibal will offer himself up without a fight or argument. His only offering will be what he thinks is his atonement to Will.

Will lies down again and tries to sleep some more.

He decides to keep the scar.


End file.
